ALL THAT SCARE

( I )

Finally the sun came out and the room got its share of light. The night-lamp was still on. The sky had been overcast during the night but now it was fine. A few white clouds floated around in the unrelenting blue. The bad weather had disappeared. Aneek Chatterjee opened his eyes. It was eight. The alarm had not rung but the sunlight had done its job. It had pushed open his eyelids working through the inner dark. He looked at the night-lamp, pale and powerless in a patch of bright sunlight, as if begging to be switched off. He went to the switchboard and switched it off. The light inside died immediately. Aneek looked at it again, relieved?

Last night he had not been able to sleep properly. There were awkward sounds disturbing his sleep, sometimes inside, sometimes outside the room and sometimes as if in the middle of the two. Who knows? May be, he had been dreaming all of them! Whatever they were, they made his sleep rather broken, discontinuous. Quite a few times, he could hear a coin dropping somewhere in the room. There were whispers too, punctuated with other sounds, almost of a pornographic character. However, there was nothing to be seen anywhere. At least, Aneek didn’t manage to see anything.


--“Hello, is it Aneek Chatterjee at the far end?”
--“Yes. Who am I speaking to?”
--“Nobody.”
--“What?”
--“Yes. The‘what’. That is more important than the ‘who’.”
--“Is it so? Then, may I know what your ‘what’ is?”
--“Have you ever been to a fish-market?”
--“Fish market! Why?”
--“Not ‘why’. Say ‘which’?”
--“Which?”
--“Say, the Gariahat fish-market.”
--“No, not for a long time.”
--“Then go. Right now.”
-- “Why?”
--“Not ‘why’, ‘where’. That is the ‘where’ for my ‘what’.”
--“And what is the ‘what’ in that ‘where’?”
--“That is for you to find out. I can only say one thing—if you ignore it and do not go, it might just take lives. It is a deadly old thing.”
--“Enough is enough. Who are you?”
--“I told you, it does not matter. One last word—do not ignore what I have just said. Remember your position, your high office. You have a lot of responsibility towards the people. If a number of them die today, it might well be a result of your carelessness.”
--“What the…”
The telephone line was disconnected from the other end. What was left of the mysterious voice was just a tortuous and enraging engaged tone. Aneek looked at the receiver, angry and confused or both equally perhaps.

( II )


A peeling sound of thunder and Aneek’s sleep broke off. He looked at the clock. Four thirty in the morning. There was very little light outside. It was raining quite heavily. He sat up on his single bed and looked through the window. The sound of the rain was whisper-like secretive to Aneek. It told so many stories to the earth and all that was inaccessible to him. The little pores on the surface of the soil had swallowed all those words, all those impassioned stories. Aneek will never be able to grasp them. Sooner or later they will evaporate through those very pores promising yet another return. However, the rain made him feel good. He could clearly differentiate this morning from the one just before. He looked at the night-lamp in its last phase of power. Even if there was no sun there will soon be some light at least. The eastern horizon was brightening already. What a day it was, yesterday! He was still to understand its implications. He looked at the table, on the right. There lay the telephone, silent for the time being. It was the telephone call, which had started that bizarre game.

Aneek got up from the bed and moved towards the centre-table to open the second drawer on the left. There was a packet there. He had brought it home. He opened it and four packets of Moods condom came out, condoms with some dots for some extended pleasure. He pulled the chair and sat upon it, observing the packets carefully. The pictures on them were the same—a boy kissing the shoulders of a girl from the back while the girl is opening the left strap of her white bra. The background of the picture was a combination of the fire and the dark. Who could have done this? Not many had any knowledge beyond that of his single status. Aneek put three of them on the table and opened the fourth one. The contents came out—sticky and hollow. He held them in his hand, feeling through them one by one with his fingers. They were smooth and Aneek felt a curious comfort, running his fingers across them. He had never needed them. He had been left out. There was anguish in his eyes. It could still be seen despite the semi-dark interior of his room.

( III )

What should I do? It must have been a joke or may be, there is some conspiracy to do me in. What is the time? It is eight-thirty. Even if I do not take the car, it will take me just about ten minutes to reach the market. It might well be a blank gunshot, but I must verify things to assure myself. What if the voice turns out to be true? What if it is a bomb? Kolkata is still no Delhi or Bangalore, but still…. If I ignore it and then it explodes, killing innocent people, I will never be able to forgive myself. Last week, there were serial bomb blasts in Delhi. May be, now it is Kolkata’s turn! After all, I am not a common man. I am a state-secretary, a high-profile boss of the ever-assuring administration. I do have a public responsibility. Moreover, if it is a really powerful bomb, even my life is at risk. How far is Golpark from Gariahat Market? I better go and check it out.
All these thoughts ran through my mind as I put down the receiver. I picked up my mobile and made a call to the bomb squad at the police headquarters and told them to reach the place as soon as possible. I put on my black corduroy trousers and an off-white Peter England shirt to make myself sartorially presentable for the public moment and rushed to the door. The lift was right there on my floor. Someone had come upstairs just now. I got into it and pressed zero. It started moving down after an initial hustle.

A large number of market-hungry people, a lot of din and bustle, the typical pungent smell—the fish market was quite a busy, disgusting spectacle. It had been a long time since I visited one. As expected, a fish-market was hardly in my scheme of things. As I went into it, some looked up at my face with surprise. Most of the locals knew me. They must have been taken aback to find me at the fish-market. I wondered how designations had turned some of the places into an oddity for me. But, where could I find that ‘what’? It seemed almost impossible. The bomb squad would be coming within fifteen-twenty minutes. Should I look for it on my own without telling anyone or should I tell everyone to evacuate the place and conduct the search or should I do nothing and wait for the squad to come along with the police? All these thoughts kept rushing here and there from one side of my head to the other. Confusion also led to anger in me. It was directed at the situation as well the forces that were behind it. I knew I had to do something. Things could well run out of time. I called two or three known faces and told them everything. They, in turn, told some others. We went towards the centre of the market and started addressing the crowd. What we said sent ripples of panic across the people as they started running in different directions. I told them to calm down. The squad would be round the corner and there was nothing to worry. Within a few minutes, the entire market place was almost empty barring some utterly perplexed fish-sellers. They were extremely angry. Not only had they become customerless all of a sudden, a lot of their fishes were trampled also by the people running around. Some of them cried out, “What did u tell them? Why did they run like that? Look, what have they done!” As they started accusing me with all the rage of the world, I had to tell them the gravity of the whole situation. They took some time to understand but then some of them joined us in our search for any suspicious object. The squad was yet to arrive.

After about five minute’s search, we could locate a bundle at the northern corner of the market. It was kept just beside the dustbin, which we had upturned in course of our search. None of the fish-sellers claimed it to be his. So, there it was, perhaps—the ‘what’ in the ‘where’! It was a medium sized bundle, rather untidy. May be, it was made to look ordinary. The cloth had been tied up with some rope and did not have any tear. I looked at the thing fixedly. I desperately wanted to open the veil myself. The game had started with me and therefore I was the best person to take it to its finale. What could be there inside that bundle? One part of my mind kept providing possibilities while the other kept refuting them. The more I looked at it, the more I got the feeling that there was a pair of eyes inside the bundle and they were looking back at me with a blinding gaze, as it were. The gaze almost made me spellbound. My feet got stuck into an anxious immobility, curbing my angry and curious intent to uncover the object of mystery. For that one moment it was as if there was nothing in the world barring that little whore and me. All the rest had gone out of existence and all my nervous energy had found its pivot in that bundle. I was lost in these thoughts when the bomb squad arrived. They took positions and examined the object with a bomb-detector from a distance. The result was negative. It was confirmed now that it did not contain a bomb. The most probable was the first to be eliminated. Then, what could it have? The fact that there was no bomb inside could have relieved me, but it did not. All sorts of thoughts started to crowd in and almost suffocate me. Could it be something personal? Something disgraceful? Was some long-hidden truth of my life just about to be blown in the wind? I became very edgy. A great spell of helpless anger reddened my cheeks. The officers of the bomb squad formed a ring around the object and started to move towards it. The disclosure was now absolutely on the cards. I closed my eyes in anxiety.
( IV )

Aneek opened his eyes. It was almost five thirty. The rain had become light outside, the room, brighter. He looked at the night lamp. Its plight had begun. Aneek outstretched his hands and switched it off. It was a really dirty game. Who could have done it—some political enemy or some personal foe? He could still remember all those ringing laughters from the fish-sellers when the bundle had been unpacked. It was a moment of real humiliation for Aneek. The contents of the bundle had told a secret story, his story. The people might have laughed at the ludicrousness of the situation—the secretary of state along with the bomb squad in a petty fish market and that too only to find such a paltry thing! In their eyes, Aneek had been befooled. But he knew in his heart, the sadistic message contained in those packs of condom. They marked the limit for Aneek. It was a horrific reminder of his incapacity to participate in one of life’s most fundamental streams. It was a life in its own, all too forgotten, all too lost for him. He had been left out. He looked at the packets of condoms on the table. One of them had remained in his right hand. A deep-rooted anger burst out in Aneek and in that fit, he held the upper part of the condom between his upper and lower teeth. All of a sudden, the room became all white, turning Aneek into a speck in a white void. The light had come back all too quickly. The night lamp could only sigh in agony.

DEUCE

The story was located deep into the night when the streets were relaxing, stretching their bodies easefully from one end of the night to another. The story was stretching itself too! There were little yawns to begin with but then it decided to tell itself…be told. The streets had just started to think that the footfalls had mostly come to an end for the day when the story decided to shake them up, a wee bit. All of a sudden, there were footfalls and quite thumping ones at that! One could see a man running across the sidewalk, nervously looking at his back from time to time. He smashed against the light post and awakened a street urchin who had been sleeping right beside it. The story looked into his bewildered eyes, full of muck. The man saw the mouth of a subway, staring at him to his left. Someone had gone into it a moment ago. He had felt a shadow while bumping into the post. How could it be open at such a time? Did it have an opening at the other end or was it yet another trap? There was a maze in his mind. But soon he realized it was not the time for thinking. The subway promised a shelter, a hideout for him. He took out his lighter, which had a small torch at its back and started running down the dark stairs. The street was still amazed. Was someone chasing the man? A very faint sound could be heard in the distance. Someone was dragging something along. The street asked the story who that man was? The story was silent for a while, lost in some deep thought, as it were, and then it uttered the word ‘Sahay’. The street could not go into the subway and check things out. So, it was the story, which went in, but only after it had made a promise to the street that it will disclose everything on its return.

The steps went down deep into that hollow until Sahay lost their count. It felt like moving down on an escalator. The stairs carried him away until he reached the pit. It was pitch dark and Sahay felt rather shadowless in its company. The torchlight helped him find a corner where he could lean against the wall and then all of a sudden, he turned around and pointed the torch at the wall, trying to find something on its surface, as it were. Nothing…it was a blank wall, much like a white sheet of paper, yet to be filled in by its writer. If it could still be white in that uncompromising dark! Sahay faced his back to the wall and switched it off. The story kept looking at him from a safe distance, imperceptible to him. Sahay kept staring into that dark where opened and closed eyes seemed all the same to one. Sahay went back in his mind. It had all started from that number. He could remember it so vividly! The train had been moving fast. It was a scorching afternoon and there were not many people in the compartment. Sahay had been standing near the gate. Something was written on the other side upon the inner-body of the train. His eyes fixed it with a stiff glance—“9836002729—Rupa, a call girl”. All places have been sold. Now who said this in present tense, all of a sudden? Had the story been following him even then? Someone must have mumbled something in his ears. Sahay took out his mobile phone from the pocket and copied the number and it was that very day on his way back home that he lost his mobile. Who could have stolen it? Perhaps the same person who had written the number on the train! However, it was only now that Sahay could say this…not then. The pungent smell of a plot had frozen the air around him that day onwards. He took a new mobile after that and it had to happen again! The same train in the same heat of a same afternoon and Sahay was up against the same spectacle—“9836002729—Rupa, a call girl”, but it was a little too familiar for comfort this time! The size of the letters had increased and now he felt them, glaring at him. However, there was something more to it and Sahay simply could not believe it! He took out his new mobile from the pocket and clarified whatever little doubt he had. He had saved his new number in his phone for he had been forgetting it frequently. He looked at the screen and then back again at the number—9836002729! He still tried to pass it off as a coincidence. May be someone had jokingly written a fictitious number which had become real in his case. Should he change the phone for that?

After a tiny respite that bitch had got back to business. Someone had thrust a handmade leaflet into his hands that day, while he had been running to catch the train. He could only look at it, after having boarded the train. It was an advertisement of a doctor of secret sexual diseases. Sahay had always been irritated by such stuff. As if he was the only one for them! But this time it had more embarrassment in store for him. The contact number written on it had been 9836002728 earlier but then somebody had overwritten on that 8 to make it 9. It was back to 9836002729—square one for Sahay. How could things be so contrived in the world of reality? Sahay could only wonder. The train had long left the platform where someone might have still been chuckling at his situation.

Sahay had to change his number. It had started to get on his nerves. But he stored that fateful thing in his new mobile alright, lest something more was to happen with it. And then it was this fearfully stagnant night when he had missed the last train that a call came from that number on his mobile. How could it be so? He had exchanged that phone and the man at the mobile-shop had assured him that he would give the phone to someone only after de-activating the old number. The loop around his neck had tightened. He had rejected the call and switched off the mobile only to realize that someone had come behind him on the empty street. Sahay started running and could hear footfalls at his back. He was being chased.

The rest, as they say, is hi(-)story…for the story…for the street. The story left Sahay and moved out of that dark tunnel. The street had been waiting for him eagerly. The story blurted out the story that was Sahay’s, but what story? How could it know the number-game? How could the story access the depths of his mind where words were fluttering like half-torn kites in a musty wind, writing and re-writing the number 9836002728 endlessly? Sahay, like most of us, had kept his most bizarre experience a top secret. The street could not understand head or tails of it and was left agape. All that was so absurd, he thought. Once again, that strange sound of someone dragging something along had become faintly audible in the distance. The eastern horizon had started to light up. The story said to the street, “I have to go now. I simply cannot tolerate daylight.” It hooted like an owl, weary of light. Ah, if one could look into its dead dark eyes where a fire was burning! It represented the eternal desire of man to tell stories, more and more stories…more and more hollow stories. The street bid him good-bye.

It was a story called ‘Deuce’ written by some obscure writer. It had been published in a literary magazine called ‘Presentation’. His friend Indraneel had given it to him. Interestingly enough the protagonist of the story was his namesake. Was that the reason why Indraneel had given the magazine to him? What else? Sahay was hardly a literary person! It was stiff due to its overtly intellectual evocations and that was what had made it so bizarre and absurd, Sahay said to himself. It was a scorching afternoon. . Sahay was near the gate and reading the story. The compartment was almost empty. The train was quite close to Howrah station. There were sounds of the brake and the train started slowing down. The same old car-shed stoppage! Sahay looked at the other side. The train had stopped. There was nothing on the other side. It was just a blank metallic surface with some scratches and patches here and there. It was pretty much like an anxious one-off page of some writer, where he could hardly manage anything more than a few pen-strokes here and there. It could only be headed for the dustbin. Sahay shifted his eyes back to the last page of the story. He could only chuckle at it. The train started to move again and he could hear a strange sound, coming from a distance. Someone was dragging something along…

He made the mark on the table.
I was around.
And the sun up & over.
A red book-shelf, which could only be there!
It came into the head
Soon to push off.
The moonlight & the cats upon his toe
My lips were moving from cover to cover
Unleashing a book upto unreadability...

Milk and blood like wine---what say?
Rock on-
-Chop off
Behead-
-Befriend?
Gunshots at the centre of your birthday-cake
Politicians have to talk about man
We have to urinate every morning!
THROUGH THE FLUSH STARKLY...

Bootless

Those days alone in the smell!
Cry, scatter alone, a-lone!
Exclamation to exclamation!
Marching nights on whitenesses!
I have been caught out by words at deep mid-wicket!
Formation to formation
Yet still with deformity in the spinal chord
Another pig swoons in the water-cloak!
I am window-tight in a forest of pamphlets
All the funds of life
I will collect in the remainders...
Elected knee-caps in a democratic series of silences!

Denial

Trifles jotted in the wires
Moon-fight within the glasses.
Once a perfecting rainbow
Another bullet is lampooned.
Twice the openers make noise
None but rain-pipes to darken.

Gilotin

Hands dipped in hot, boiling milk. Utpala. Even an un-man like me! When the second bullet had struck, I knew, this was to be the end. Still inched forward with the body on wet soil, holding all the pressure onto the elbows, crippling on as ever. In this bullet-hit hell of a body, for the first time, in the (w)hole of 32 years, I felt some sort of an instinct, boiling up to a considerable height. If home can be reached, I will put in one final effort, even if it is the last gasp. Neither eroticism nor exactly self-love, it was like a desperation to create a future to resistance, that had been clawing my blood-smeared hell-body! A man like me would do something to deserve a bullet sometime! Could Utpala ever imagine this in her wildest day-dreams?

Perplexed hands then, Utpala's, dipped in hot, boiling milk. Hands almost fully white, further whitening, Utpala's. Day in and day out, this dipping, this dripping! Some inexplicable comfort, as if, Utpala's! Each time, when she lifts her milked, whitened and further whitening hands from the bowl, a child gets designed (ah! only to be a figment!)amid her finger-lines. After that, a strange anger, Utpala's, which can kill and does kill as she strangulates the mis-imagined child, dipping it into the hot, boiling milk. Utpala can create as well as uncreate.

Had to stop in this bush. The body, nearing stagnation, could hardly move on. But, still enough understanding left to realize that I had had an erection. The thing had stiffened so much, that it was becoming exceedingly difficult to crawl forward. Could not even stay on my back. There were bullets in the shoulder and underneath. Tried to dig a hole with both hands. The soil was soft due to rain and went in comfortably. Then I opened my zip and entered the thing straight into the hole, I had dug. It went deep, out of visibility. The pain started to soften. My eyes were closing in ease.

Hands dipped in hot, boiling milk. Utpala. Almost the dead of night. Subimal arrives pretty late these days. Must be some secret meeting again! With a pain that had started to soften, Utpala lifted her hands from the milk. There was something in her hands. Utpala observed. A bullet. Bloodless. Utpala looked at the blank wall, which was in front of her. Then, she threw the bowl full of milk, towards it. Little columns of milk started to make their way down in the form of streams. The wall had become partially wet with milk. There was some heat too and perhaps the surface of the wall shook a little as there were little twig-like rings of smoke, making their room from it. By that time, Utpala had closed her eyes and got stuck into the bullet with her sharp, boiling teeth. Even the bullet had to be silenced, silence.

Angularity

The thread was being moved through the surface of the grass. Perhaps, somebody had been flying a kite somewhere. As our feet came into its tangle and we got stuck, we looked down, only to see the thread being pulled away from us, across the vast stretch of the maidan. I was trying to kiss her, but the thread had got in the way of it. The kiss. The lips. The family. Like upturned shoe-soles in the sea-beaches. Cross-currents, there were in the quicksand. The thread had become a pointer. Trying to take us along--an anchor? There were little pockets in the grass. Little errors. The thread was strangling them one by one, striving to establish a pause in the two of us. We looked up. Not a single kite in the sky.
There had been one such thread, sometime back. Taking life. A pigeon's left wing had come under its power, impairing the ability that may have led to flight. Then, the dog's turn arrived. I could not do anything for the bird. The thread was the similarity between the two events, the lack of a kiss over there, the difference.
Now, I could see the thread, up in the air, going round and round like a web and linking the remaining tree-tops all across the maidan. It had started to emit a tremendous energy of darkness, blanketing the blueness of the afternoon-sky with a dusk-like madness, as if the whole sky was about to turn into a giant wingless kite. She had been mute all along. Not even a sound had come out of her. Could she peep into my thinking? I looked at her. She was looking up towards the sky. She finally broke her silence, of my thoughts and of her words---"Can we get married now?"

VIGIL

A watch-tower. No sounds elsewhere. No such, sounds outside. Pin drops to darkness or silence--untellable.

A mangrove forest, in the making as yet. Channels of water shivering through its body, inching towards the sea, that is (can only be) distant & dark in this blankness. Not much sound elsewhere.

Here arrives a couple of eyes, with the intent of seeing, sorry, watching. Is it not obvious? The watch-tower is for watching, pricking on!

No such man to be watched anywhere. Neither women. Only putrid sounds bubbling in what he (not us) would like to call his head! He calls out. His eyes. His mouth. Sounding out. Sea-waves--the only responses!

Then the tree-heads start nodding in obedience. Each tree vomits out a soldier under its shadow...Now a whole grove of soldiers, in the offing. Getting set, wounding the silence, which can also be darkness, by the way. Now the secret channels resemble trenches.

Now the WAR--the event, the spectacle, breaking the solemnity, that could have been allowed to be silence before.
A couple of eyes wink now--once. Then again. One by one. Together again. The battle-field now looks completed. It is time for the eyes to burn out, be finished. All this, as a resistance to the walls. Every man has become a watch-tower. Soldiers start vanishing, first one by one, then all together. Foredoomed.

Drowning

A trick to find a lost key: Coming back into the room With a mind within the loss Not looking for the key Just dropping the present key & then getting out within-- Time Told Retold Finding the lost key Coming back into the room Once upon a room Dropping the present one-- & all against the sea One-two & three It's the trick to spell a K-E-Y...

Basics

I see water -A face Then I 'face' water I see.... I write 'This is a window-pane & this the premise from which my story would start! It would have to start from here'. & as I finish the lines A stone breaks the window-pane I see water Face Trace Stop.

Once

The deaths carried by sounds, Are the deaths that we evade. The depths trodden by life, Are the depths that we create. Just let me be your soul, That lulls the dust to sleep. And Then Awake Afresh, When all the sounds are dead, You have no hole to dig You have no skin to scratch Just scratch upon your sin A still-image of life!

Before

Before
A wonderful sunshine
Before
The world is unmade
Before
A green grass on corpus
Before
The sea-gull is listed
After
I want to leave for
That's the time it comes in
That's the time you get off
That's the time he speaks off
With belting rain in seashore
Before
The world is unmade
With belting rain in seashore
Here I come for that time
Before & after withdrawn!

Woundstruck

Loving a night, she moves out.
One own night, hers only alone.
One minute detail still, as if long left,
As when she will cusp the frame,
If at all, that can ever ring inside the ridden names.

The myth in a chocolate-box floats along
Like her cloaked vains, water-tight.
No like, not ever like, never like the likeness
Of what the world knows like.
Her myth, hers own, a rapid myth of jungle-nights,
Mumbled strains of a loving waste,
As & when the keyhole bends
To taste the bricks of the cornfield-dust.

She is still.
----
Only still.
---
Now the time.
-----
The lacking time.
------
Up in arms.
----
Mine to shame.
------
There she picks.
------
Her closing clue.

Ring

Bunch in keys
Foreseen glances
Once, twice and thrice
Upon the times
The keyholes breathing silences

I have always been in love with grammar-books.

Marker

A book it was
A page in it
Ooze aloud
To break the rift
A dusk it is
The ink I am
A book in pain
A worm in it.

Dali

A clock I married
---garlanded.
A wall, I hang
---wall-hang-ed.
White, the colour
---pinpointed.
The clock I killed
---is granted.

Box

Blood-vein, I gape,
Thinking, that night.
Inside, not rain
I fake, ignite.

You-deep, skull-crack
Gasping, kindred.
Rusted, haunting
Humdrum, sunset.

Crosstalk it was
all rain long
in the grass
and the name
in the slush
I jumbled the drops
crossdrops they were
all this when the sunlight had chopped off my nails...

EGGLETS-3

Disturbed swings
---You thought,
Swings are distributed
---Only this much
I could return to.

EGGLETS-2

Wings in the wound
And the sound afterwards
The weakening blood
A presence was heard
Touching upon buttonholes
I learn how to smell.

EGGLETS-1

Only when you tremble out
And the similarity in the sky
Murmuring eyes joining with
But the polarity of strings
Wooden roads in a freeze-shot
Thus, a table changes its relationships with me.